Tuesday, February 21, 2006
The "memogate" lie that will not die
A reader calls my attention to this Knight-Ridder article of a few days ago. The article is about the relationship of the White House and the media, and in the middle, author Steven Thomma just casually throws a reference to: "CBS's Dan Rather using forged documents to blast Bush."
The assertion that Dan Rather was using "forged documents" is one of those lies that will not die. The fact is that CBS was unable to prove the authenticity of the documents; that is far from proof that they were forged (not to mention that the content of the memos was not only never seriously challenged, but indeed corroborated by other evidence).
In a way, though, even more dangerous than the lie that CBS was using forged documents is the notion that Dan Rather was using them to "blast Bush." Dan Rather was a journalist (not my favorite by a long shot), doing his job by reporting the news. The fact that that news was potentially damaging to George Bush is the consequence of the content of the story, not of Dan Rather's alleged (and non-existent, in my view) animosity, and this kind of "shoot the messenger" attitude coming not from George Bush or his cohorts, but from a Knight-Ridder reporter, is truly repugnant.
